


The Moon on the Earth

by mechadogmarron



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner
Genre: Canon Character Deaths Only, Character Study, Gen, Post-Chaos Route, Pre-Chaos Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 15:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18390803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechadogmarron/pseuds/mechadogmarron
Summary: Dahn has always followed his heart. By his own hands, he's found his justice, and for better or worse, he's acted it out.A two-ton locust hasn't hurt, though.





	The Moon on the Earth

Dahn was three years old when he first learned to whistle. There were no insects at his beck and call, not at first, just an exasperated older sister and a patient father watching as he put his fingers to his lips and produced a loud, clear sound. The beaming pride on his pa’s face made all twenty minutes he’d spent at — a lot, when you’re still a toddler — all worth it. They practiced together every day after that, even Akane, and he never questioned why she was to learn the art but never use it.

On his fourth birthday, his father took him out to the woods, just the two of them. “Don’t show fear,” he heard, and he understood what was about to happen. They hiked out to a clearing, and there, his father whistled for Taromaru.

The great red insect regarded him, in those precious moments, and he didn’t show fear; he didn’t feel fear. Something about the creature fascinated him, brightened his mind with a newfound curiosity, a sudden interest in the family business. He put a hand to its masked head, and it chittered at him. “Can it speak?”

“No. This is Taromaru; the Tento bless the mightiest of us with their strength. It’ll answer to your call, just as we’ve practiced. You mustn’t let your guard down around them, but they’re reliable, nothing like the demons the Summoners call on. They do as they’re told.” No honeyed words, no poisoning the mind, no special technology required to control their violent and cruel impulse. Just a simple whistle. “Taromaru, this is Dahn, my son. Starting from today, you’ll be at his call.”

The creature seemed to examine him for a moment before making what he assumed was a sound of assent. His pa clapped his hands, just once, and dismissed the huge insect. “Excellent. Dahn, I’d like you to summon Taromaru. Just like we’ve been practicing, alright?”

Fingers to his mouth, he whistled, and the creature appeared, at his side this time. It was so much larger than him, so much more powerful, and he wondered why it even cares what he has to think or say for a moment before shaking his head. He was a Tsukigata, wasn’t he? Who wouldn’t want to listen? “It must’ve been growing for a long time,” he wondered aloud.

“This Taromaru is only a few days old. Oh, don’t make that face, it won’t get bigger. Taromaru don’t belong to our world. They’re born fully grown — the Tento created him as a birthday gift for you.” He was too young to parse the grimace on his father’s face, too young to understand how much those gifts cost. “You and I will come out here every day to practice summoning Taromaru, but I don’t want you summoning him on your own unless there’s an emergency. Now, go ahead and dismiss him. I’ve got another gift for you.”

As his father had showed, he sent the insect away. Smiling, Akijiro produced his second gift: a practice sword. “Taromaru will protect you as best he can, but there are things you can’t rely on a soldier bug for, and a Tsukigata knows not to trust the Summoners to fix their problems.”

And so the schedule that defined his childhood began: wake up at dawn, and out to the woods to practice the blade, stomach empty so as to teach him that food didn’t come easily. Breakfast was a few hours later, usually a light meal of rice; there was no toast in the Tsukigata household. He ate it quickly, and then hurried to his lessons, where the older men of the Tsukigata taught him matters of leadership, in particular his uncle. His men are his soldiers, he learned, not so different from Taromaru, but less reliable, more willing to betray. Better a bug than a man, better his own sword than a bug. Above all else, he learned their places in the world: Akane would run the house, the day-to-day matters of the clan; she was to ensure the accounting of the harvest. He had a more important duty, one to their long-term livelihood, their work, their business. Under him, each assassin would know his place and do his duty.

He learned a hundred ways to kill, but as always, a few were preferred: a blade did the job cleanly, or Taromaru’s capabilities in taking a man’s luck, subtle and untraceable. Failing those, his people were not above poison, not so honorable as to forget the ways of the assassins before them. They didn’t use guns, a weapon a little too modern for their tastes, but he learned to fight against them, to knock them aside, even as it was beaten into his head that he shouldn’t be seen anyways, that a weapon drawn against him was already a loss. He paid attention, proved his worth in the sparring ring. When he was twelve he started shadowing the elder members of the clan as they went about their grim business, and as he turned fourteen he took on his first mission.

Despite his brashness, his loudness, he was a natural at the art, his look at me! attitude fading with the faded gray mask he was given, not yet worthy of black, let alone red. He found the politician he’s been sent to take out at a fine restaurant, made his way in on the back of a face that could just as easily be eighteen as fourteen, a countenance that screamed nobility.

Make it clear it’s a killing, they said, a warning shot. So when the moment was just right, he turned to another weapon the Fukoshi trained in: a blowgun.

The dart hit him. A moment of silence, and then commotion, screaming, fear. He played the role of a terrified country bumpkin just fine, slipping into his accent, and then out the door.

No one could mistake it for anything but an assassination, and no doctor could protect against the insect-devil poisons, no one but one of his own. It was a short cab out to the edge of the city, and as he watched the urban landscape go by, he felt… something.

Well, better to go home than to dwell on it too much. The mission was complete, and he was hardly going to jeopardize the family name by staying out wondering about the lifestyle of these city types, the modern men and women who walked the streets. The Fukoshi way had yet to burn him, had provided him with food and a home and the approval of his family. What more could there be in life?

He whistled, and Taromaru appeared from thin air. There was some back and forth, some chittering, and then he clung onto Taromaru’s back as the insect carried him home. Was it safe? No. Would the clan approve? Perhaps not. But no one could see him this way, no one could follow him back home. And beyond that, well…

There was something comforting about the hum of Taromaru’s wings, about the way its body thrummed. It reminded him of days with Akane, sneaking out together after dinner to sit in the moonlight with his insectoid companion. They’d lean against its body while she read by the light of its glowing eyes. It was all good, clean Japanese work, the sort of thing that their father would’ve been proud to see her read, but even so, it was an act of rebellion.

He meant to return immediately, though he was far ahead of schedule, but Taromaru pulled beneath him, towards a spot in the woods. He knew he shouldn’t trust it, any more than he’d trust a fellow Fukoshi who tried to lead him out to an abandoned part of the woods on his own, but he did, implicitly, and he let it land at the base of an old abandoned well.

Taromaru chittered, and from nowhere, a strange, stunted humanoid appeared, its head covered by a bell-shaped mask.

“Who is this, who comes to visit the Mushibito?”

He looked to Taromaru, but the bug was silent as ever. It wasn’t its fault that it couldn’t speak, but even so, he couldn’t help the flash of annoyance. He’d never heard of the Mushibito before, never seen anything like them. Were they stricken by some disease, to stand so strange? Without their face, he couldn’t identify where they were from, but what skin he could see was a strange, ashen gray, impossibly smooth, almost inhuman. And how could they not know who he was? “I’m Dahn Tsukigata. Taromaru wanted me to meet you.”

“Ah.” It looked to the soldier bug, and then there was what he could only describe as a conversation between them, all strange insect sounds Dahn couldn’t understand a lick of. Finally, it nodded, and turned back to him. “We are the Mushibito Tento.”

“Oh, I apologize, uh, my lord,” he replied, extremely awkward. He had grown up on legends of their splendor, their power. Seeing this one in real life was a little… disenchanting, almost.

“The Mushibito are not lords. The Mushibito do not pride themselves. The Mushibito listen for Lord Belzeboo alone, and live until the prophecy is made true.” It spoke awkwardly, slurring words together, pausing in strange places, stilted and uncomfortable. Still, it was easy enough to understand, and already Dahn knew how much his people’s natural way of speaking was looked down on in the Capital. It was easy to empathize, even for him.

“Are you related to the Tento Lords, then?”

The creature hissed at the name. “Pompous bastards, disgraced sons of diseased mothers! We of the Mushibito accept the life we are given, and ask for no more. They have forgotten what it means to be of the elder race. They fatten themselves for the slaughter.”

“They can’t be that bad. They gave me Taromaru, after all.”

“Their gifts come at a cost.”

“What, a grain tithe? It’s only fair for us to feed them, isn’t it?”

“You will understand, and when you do, return here, or to the wells north of town. The Mushibito will help you.” It lifted its hands to its mask, and removed it, revealing what may have been yet another mask or may have been its true face, sharp, cold, and insectoid. “The Mushibito will wait for you until then.”

“Understood,” he said, though he didn’t understand at all, and he watched as the man disappeared.

He returned to his people, to his father and to Akane, and he couldn’t mistake the pride in his father’s eyes for anything else. He’d done the family business, done the family proud, done the mission cleanly. Whatever Fukoshi had been sent to observe had apparently given him a glowing review, because the man even showed an extremely rare spot of physical affection, a clap on the back.

“You’ll be a fine chief someday,” Akijiro said, and despite himself, Dahn beamed.

The celebration of a young man’s coming of age wasn’t exactly rowdy, but it was as close as the Fukoshi ever got, decent sake and a great roast cow to celebrate their future chief. The former tasted of sweet, burning vinegar, strange on his tongue and stranger in his belly, and his father allowed him two cups before cutting him off.

“C’mon,” his uncle said, “let the kid have some fun.”

“He has an important meeting tonight,” his father replied. “A Tsukigata shouldn’t conduct himself poorly before anyone, let alone a key contact. Now, my boy, why don’t you go have some more to eat?”

He did so, freely and voraciously, and was delighted to see his sister just as joyful in partaking in the celebrations. She was serious — too serious, in his opinion — but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a bone in her body for having a good time. Any Fukoshi worth their salt ate when there was food and not work, anyways. Their people weren’t like those city folk, fat on their gluttonous wealth; they’d known hunger before. When he was eight, much of the harvest had failed, and work had dried up, not enough to buy rice for the whole clan. Even the Tsukigata had tightened their belts. A true leader didn’t feast during famine.

It was the stroke of midnight when his father led him away, out to where they communed with the Tento Lords. They should’ve been majestic, should’ve held some power over him, would’ve been, through their strange masks and strange speech and eminent power. They appeared, and he could barely fake shock and fear at their familiar insectoid appearances, could barely pretend to be in awe of their strength.

They were the Mushibito, glammed out and dolled up. He knew what laid beneath their masks, after all, that beneath their armor were the same pathetic bodies. They might have magic, but so did Geiren, and though he deserved their respect, he was hardly a God.

“So this is the new Tsukigata. You’ve summoned Taromaru many times.”

“He is a stalwart companion. I appreciate your generosity in giving him to me.”

“A respectful boy, isn’t he? You’ve done well, Akijiro. Your people have proved your devotion to us. As long as your loyalty is never in doubt, neither shall be our support. Will he be taking on his role as a leader soon?”

Akijiro nodded. “For now, he studies under his uncle, and learns our way of assassinations. Soon, he will don the red mask, and soon enough, come before you as our village’s leader.”

“Ah, yes. Tell me, Dahn, what do you think of the soldier bugs you have been provided?”

“They’re loyal and mighty, far better than Geiren’s demonic allies, and a show of your great generosity and might.” The words felt leaden on his tongue. He had no reason to dislike the Tento — beyond their false airs, they did no harm to the village, and offered a great boon — but even so, something about them felt wrong.

“Ah, a clear speaker. Then tell me, Dahn, how it would be if their presence was rescinded?” There was something in the Tento Lord’s voice that he didn’t like, but he couldn’t figure it out. Years of studying human emotion, how to read someone for any sign they might attack, meant nothing before something so inhuman.

Akijiro looked startled, uncomfortable at the line of questioning, but Dahn didn’t let them bother him. “They’re what separates us from common killers. The Tsukigata are nothing without them.” It was what he was taught from an early age, and readily apparent to anyone who thought for even a moment.

“A wise boy. That is all we have to ask of you, Akijiro. Return on the appointed day, and we can discuss more serious matters.”

His father’s expression was stony, almost contemptuous. “Of course, my Lord.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


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